The first clear evidence of agriculture appears in Soconusco
during the period which archaeologists have called the Locona
(1650-1500 B.C. What is not so clear, however, is whether the
earliest cultivated plants were roots and tubers, such as manioc and
sweet potatoes, or seed crops, such as maize, beans, and chiles.
Certainly there is little question but that roots and tubers would
have been easier for incipient farmers to cultivate because they are
propagated from shoots and will grow under a wide variety of soil and
moisture conditions, as Sauer has pointed out (1952); on the other
hand, by the end of the Locona period maize definitely appears to
have become the dominant crop, with various beans, chiles, and
squashes supplementing the diet as well. (To commemorate the
agricultural origins of the hierarchical society which arose in
Soconusco at this time, Clark [1991, 13] suggests naming the people
of the Early Formative cultures of the region the Mokaya, which is an
anglicized version of a Mixe-Zoque word meaning "corn people.") (See
Table 2 in Chapter 2 for a chronology applicable to the entire
Mesoamerican area.) It is also likely that by this same time cacao, a
tree native to Soconusco, was being appreciatively exploited to
prepare a "drink of the gods," at least for the noble elite of the
society.

Although there is little reason to assume that the transition
from a hunting-gathering-fishing-fowling economy into one where
farming had become the main source of subsistence was anything other
than gradual and unspectacular, during the Locona period cultural
influences emanating from Soconusco began to spread northward and
westward through the Tehuantepec Gap into the highlands of Oaxaca and
the lowlands of the Gulf coastal plain. Archaeological evidence for
this expanding sphere of interaction comes inevitably from such
tangible artifacts as ceramics, but by no means were the cultural
influences necessarily limited to them. We have already briefly noted
that the earliest ceramics in Mesoamerica demonstrate three distinct
geographic foci, only one of which was in Soconusco (the other two,
you will recall, were in the central highlands of Mexico and on the
northern coast of Veracruz); but if any of these foci was the
recipient of influences from further afield, such as Central and
South America, it would most likely have been Soconusco.

Now, while one does not have to predicate the beginnings of
pottery in Mesoamerica on diffusion from South America, not to do so
is to unnecessarily complicate its evolution in the Mexican arena.
Indeed, in view of the complex life history of the maize plant as
worked out by Mangelsdorf, it appears that regular and repeated
contacts between Mesoamerica and the west coast of South America were
already commonplace by at least 2000 B.C. (On the Atlantic side of
the Americas, migrants from South America are known to have been
island-hopping into the West Indies as early as 5000 B.C. (Adams,
1991, 43).

It would not be unreasonable, therefore, to suggest that
sometime around 1500 B.C. the peaceful isolation of Soconusco may
have been brusquely punctuated by the arrival on its shores of alien
seafarers borne on large sail-bedecked log rafts. Although they came
not as conquerors or religious missionaries, their arrival signaled
the collision of two different worlds as surely as did the arrival of
the Europeans on the opposite coast of the Americas some 3000 years
later.

The newcomers may well have hailed from coastal Ecuador, which
had access to timber resources for raft construction that were
lacking farther to the south; in any case they were the cultural
heirs of the civilizations which had arisen in the exotic river
valleys of desert Peru perhaps some 800 years earlier. (The Cerro
Sechín culture, now recognized as the forerunner of the
so-called Chavín civilization, has been dated to 2300 B.C.)
The ceramics which they brought with them -- subsequently labeled as
"Ocós" after the seacoast settlement near the mouth of the
border river (Rio Suchiate) between Mexico and Guatemala, which was
first uncovered by the excavations of Michael Coe in 1960 -- were
initially likened to the Chorrera pottery of southern Ecuador. Gareth
Lowe, in his studies of Barra pottery somewhat later (1967), also saw
South American antecedents for the Ocós ceramics. However,
more recent research has called into question the dating of both the
supposed South American donor cultures and the Mesoamerican recipient
cultures, so the spread of pottery into the region may not have been
as simple a south-to-north diffusion as first thought.

Whether or not the incipient, out-reaching civilizations of
western South America provided the stimulus for sophisticated forms
of pottery to the burgeoning chieftainships of Soconusco, it seems
likely that these civilizations would have had other, perhaps even
more earthshaking influences on these pullulant societies, for ideas
travel as easily as objects or commodities. Similarities have been
noted by some scholars in the religious motifs of the Andean area and
the so-called Olmecs of Mesoamerica, so one cannot rule out the
introduction of such influences. Indeed, it is not impossible that,
interwoven in this religio-spiritual exchange, there may have been
some measure of narcotic export, for Chavín was itself a key
way station in the coca network emanating in the Amazon basin. Nor is
it likely that these southern seafarers returned home empty-handed,
for the timing of the Ocós contact coincides closely with the
ultimate breakthrough of maize as the staple crop of the Americas.
Thus, the return cargo may have included not only new and improved
varieties of corn but also such highly prized commodities as cacao,
quetzal feathers, and rubber, all of which Soconusco produced in
abundance.

Figure 7.

Because of its wealth of exotic commodities, such as cacao,
quetzal feathers, and rubber, Soconusco early became a nexus of trade
routes on both land and sea. Undoubtedly one of the primary routes of
movement since time immemorial has been along the Pacific piedmont,
stretching northward into the heart of Mexico and southward into
Central America. The rugged terrain back of Izapa most likely
encouraged traders moving inland to utilize the Motozintla Pass,
through which access to both the Grijalva Depression and the
highlands of Guatemala could be gained. Sea contacts with South
America had probably already been made ca. 1500 B.C. by residents
from the 0cós area and northward along the coast as well.

The Ocós phase (1500-1350 B.C.) may well have marked
Soconusco's introduction to the world, at least to the expanding
trade network of South America's developing civilizations. As such it
was a period of unprecedented commercial activity and intellectual
ferment.What had been a relatively somnolent,
self-contained, and self-satisfied society whose horizons were
limited by the mountains on the north and the unending ocean on the
south had suddenly been thrust into contact with peoples of more
advanced culture from "beyond the sea." just knowing that they
existed must have been a catalyst to engendering an entirely new
"world view" among the thinking elite of Soconusco. Surely, life
could never again be the same.

Although it is impossible to assign an accurate date to it,
there is a carved stone set into the middle of the north wall of the
ball court at Izapa (identified as Stela 67) which unmistakably
portrays some aspect of Soconusco's early maritime contacts. (It
should be noted that the archaeologists who excavated Izapa argue
that almost all of the monuments found at the site were carved and
set in place after 300 B.C. [Lowe, Lee, and Martinez, 1982, 231.)
Whether these contacts were of an explorative or a commercial nature
we will probably never know, but the depiction in question is both
simple and graphic. It shows a (bearded?) man with arms outstretched
standing in a boat crossing a body of water in which fish are
portrayed beneath the waves and two long-nosed wind-gods are shown
blowing from opposite directions. In the man's right hand is a cross.
While some viewers of the carving are immediately tempted to see the
latter as a Christian symbol, it could, of course, represent a cross
staff, which was an early navigational device. Naturally, how the
carving is interpreted has a material bearing on the age which is
assigned to it. In any event, it is obvious that the only navigable
body of water within reach of Izapa is the Pacific Ocean (had canoe
traffic through the coastal lagoons been depicted, it is unlikely
that either waves or wind-gods would have played any part in the
scene), but whether the carving testifies to a transpacific voyage or
some coastal venture there is no sure way of knowing.

CALENDARS AND COUNTING

The 260-day sacred almanac

As long as the people of Soconusco gained their livelihood from
hunting, gathering, fishing, and fowling, there was little need to
take cognizance of the rhythms of nature, except in the most general
way. Surely, everyone was familiar with the fact that the animals of
the forest mated at certain times and not at others; that some of the
trees of the forest flowered before the rains began; that sometimes
the offshore current moved from the "left hand" and at other times
from the "right"; that sometimes the sun rose over the sea and
sometimes over the land; and that the migrations of the turtles along
the coast or their trek up on the beaches to lay their eggs coincided
with certain of these "signs" and not with others.

Figure 8.

In the middle of the north wall of the ball court of Izapa is this
carving of a (bearded?) man standing in a boat with a cross in one of
his outstretched hands. In the waves beneath the boat fish are
depicted, and on each side of the boat long-nosed wind-gods blow from
opposite directions. In the inventory of monuments made at the site,
this was catalogued as Stela 67.

Even as they had consciously begun to collect the shoots of
the manioc root or the sprouts of the sweet potato (both, by the way,
of South American origin) and stick them in the ground, it mattered
little whether they did so before or after the rains came. Manioc
root grew very readily, and as long as it was well cooked before it
was pounded into paste and made into dough-balls or tortillas, it
could be counted on to still the pangs of hunger whenever the
hunters, fishers, or fowlers came home empty-handed.

On the other hand, it was quite another matter when the
serious cultivation of maize began (most likely around 1500 B.C.).
Although there never was a problem with adequate warmth in Soconusco,
to have attempted to plant corn during the dry season was to flirt
with disaster. Even a mistake of a few weeks would mean that the
seeds would dry out and die before they could start to germinate. If,
on the other hand, the would-be maize farmer waited too long before
planting his seed, the rains would begin with a vengeance and then
the likelihood of even getting the seed into the ground without
having it wash away would be minimal. Thus, while maize held out the
promise of a heavier yield and a tastier and more nutritious
foodstuff, it also demanded a greater awareness of the timing of the
life-giving rains. To realize this promise, it was now imperative, as
never before, to understand the cycle of the seasons.

But where in the random chaos of Soconusco's nature could the
careful observer discern the first semblance of order or pattern?
Certainly, changing directions of ocean currents and the migratory
habits of birds or turtles may have offered some clues, but they were
too imprecise a basis on which to establish an agricultural
timetable. The answer most likely had to be found in the movements of
the sun itself, because it could be seen to shift its positions of
rising and setting from far out over the ocean to well up beyond the
mountains with a slow, day-by-day regularity. And, in the process,
there were two days during this solar migration when the sun passed
directly overhead -- once on its journey from the sea to the land and
once on its way back again.

Anyone who made a conscientious effort to mark this rhythm --
and obviously some curious skygazer with the luxury of time at his
disposal did -- would have realized that the most effective way to
calibrate the sun's zenithal passage was with a simple upright pillar
or post (i.e., a gnomon). At noon on the days on which the sun passed
directly overhead, the pillar would cast no shadow whatsoever,
whereas on any other days of the year that would not be the case.
Therefore, once the zenithal position of the sun had been
ascertained, a precise "date" could be assigned to it. However,
either of the two days when the sun was directly overhead was
theoretically as good as the other on which to begin the count; why,
therefore, should the skygazer prefer one of these days to the other?

Table 3 - Dates of Zenithal Sun Positions within
Mesoamerica

Latitude (ºN)

Southward Passage

Northward Passage

Days Elapsed N-S

Days Elapsed S-N

13

August 18

April 24

116

249

13.5

August 17

April 26

113

252

14

August 15

April 27

110

255

14.5

August 14

April 29

107

258

15

August 12

May 1

103

262

15.5

August 10

May 2

100

265

16

August 8

May 4

96

269

16.5

August 7

May 6

93

272

17

August 5

May 8

89

276

17.5

August 3

May 10

85

280

18

August 1

May 11

82

283

18.5

July 30

May 13

78

287

19

July 28

May 16

73

292

19.5

July 26

May 18

69

296

20

July 23

May 20

64

301

20.5

July 21

May 23

59

306

Note: At the latitude of Izapa (14.8º N) the zenithal sun is
overhead on August 13 on its southward passage and again on April 30
on its northward passage. These passages result in intervals of 105
days when the sun is north of Izapa and 260 days when it is south of
Izapa.

Of course, his choice could have been perfectly arbitrary. But
more likely, it was conditioned by another natural phenomenon of
which he could hardly have been ignorant. By sheer coincidence, a
night or two before the southward passage of the vertical sun, the
sky was literally bombarded with shooting stars which had their
apparent origin in the northeast. This was the annual Perseid meteor
shower, occasioned by Earth's passage along its orbit through a rain
of stellar debris which takes place every August. Thus, our skygazer
would have been witness to celestial fireworks which are virtually
unequaled throughout the rest of the year, beginning usually on the
night of August 11 but decidedly reaching their climax on the evening
of August 12. The following day at noon, August 13, the sun passes
through the zenith over Soconusco.

Figure 9.

The zenithal sun makes its southward passage over latitude
14º.8 N on August 13 and its northward passage over the same
parallel 260 days later on April 30. Located along this line are both
the Classic Maya site of Copán, hypothesized as the birthplace
of the sacred almanac by Nuttall in 1928, and the Formative site of
Izapa, first identified by the author as the hearth of the calendar
in 1973.

The signs were therefore unmistakable. First the heavens would
give their notice. All night long the skygazer would watch as stars
burst from behind the towering mountains to the northeast and flashed
across the sky. And the following morning, as the sun arched higher
and higher across the heavens, he would watch as the shadow it cast
grew steadily shorter, until, as the sun reached its zenith, its
shadow completely disappeared. This then, he decided, was the day for
his count to begin.

On the other hand, our skygazer was faced with something of a
philosophical dilemma. Counting days was an entirely new experience,
because up to now if it had been necessary to enumerate anything, it
may have been only such things as fish, or cacao beans, or quetzal
feathers -- all items which arc discrete entities. Now that the day
for starting the tally had arrived, the skygazer had to decide when
in the day it actually became "Day 1".Certainly not at noon,
because that was in the middle of a day that was still in progress.
For someone accustomed to think in terms of entities rather than
fractions, it was no more logical to conceptualize a part of a day
than it was a part of a fish, a cacao bean, or a quetzal feather. It
therefore must have seemed obvious that the day could not be counted
until it was completed, that is, at sunset. In any event, this is the
pattern of thought which Mesoamericans were to employ in all their
subsequent mathematical computations. Like the odometer on an
automobile recording the distance traveled, a unit of time
measurement was not counted until it had been completed.

From clues in the internal structure of the Mesoamerican
calendar, the event just described appears to have taken place about
the middle of the fourteenth century B.C. (Confirmation of this date
may be obtained by correlating the Maya calendar with our own using
the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson value of 584,285. This reveals
that the beginning day of the 260-day sacred almanac, 1 Imix,
coincided with August 13 in the year 1359 B.C. Remember, too, that
because historians do not recognize a "year zero," as astronomers do,
when the designation "B.C." is employed it represents a date one year
older than the minus value which the latter use. Thus, 1359 B.C. to a
historian is -- 1358 to an astronomer.)

An interval of 260 days is, of course, divisible in many ways,
and among the peoples of Mesoamerica two of the most common ways of
grouping numbers were in "20's" and "13's." Both of these numbers can
be thought of as global, or universal, "givens" known to virtually
every people in the world. Obviously, the former module was the first
to be discovered by humankind, for it represented a simple
inventorying of an individual's own fingers and toes. The second
module was much less obvious -- at least, that is, until humankind
began trying to measure time; then the importance of "13" quickly
manifests itself, for this is the number of full moons within a
"year." It is definitely possible that a lunar count of sorts was
already in use in the Soconusco region, but if so, like all lunar
counts it lacked the precision which our skygazer was hoping to
achieve. In any case, the point that I am making is that it must have
seemed quite logical for him to count in groups or "bundles" made up
of either 13 or 20 days, and to assign each day in the "bundle" its
own number and name.

Having started with the southward zenithal passage of the sun,
the count was to continue until the sun once again passed overhead on
its way northward. Depending where in Soconusco one was, that next
shadowless passage took place about 260 days later -- or as chance
would have it, just as the skygazer was nearing the end of his 20-day
count for the 13th time. (According to our modern calendar, this
occurs on April 30.) Of course, the resolution of the 260-day cycle
into these two key multiples may not have been totally a matter of
chance. If, for example, our skygazer's initial count had been
carried out at Chantuto -- one of the coastal lagoons where some of
the earliest population concentrations of Soconusco have been found
-- it may have produced an unwieldy interval such as 261 or 262 days
between zenithal sun passages. In that event, he may have realized
that a slight shift in geography would be repaid by a result which
was mathematically far more harmonious. However, the temptation to
move southward along the coast to find such a location was not great,
because in that direction -- once past Altamira -- the protected
lagoon environment was quickly replaced by long open beaches of
wave-swept volcanic sand. By contrast the lush, well-watered slopes
of the foothills must have seemed wonderfully attractive. Indeed,
there is good evidence that the initial occupation of the area
surrounding Izapa was already under way by 1500 B.C. (Ekholm, 1969,
19). It seems very likely, therefore, that if the felicitous 260-day
interval had not been discovered quite by chance at a coastal site
such as Altamira, a conscious decision must have been made to
calibrate that interval at Izapa. And if that is true, then the
choice of Izapa's location can well be cited as one of the first
illustrations of applied astronomy and mathematics in the New World.

Having now "massaged" his count into workable modules, the
skygazer had next to develop a system for identifying the individual
days. (Because we do not know what the skygazer called the days of
his count, we will use the terms that have come down to us from the
Aztecs -- who were his most recent heirs.) By assigning each day a
number -- never to exceed 13, but coupling it with one of 20
different names (signifying, for example, an animal, a plant, or a
force of nature) -- it would be possible to give it a unique identity
within the 260-day count. Thus, beginning with "1 Alligator" and
continuing with "2 Wind," "3 House," "4 Lizard," and so on, the count
would run through its 13 numerical permutations of its 20 day-names
and once again reach "1 Alligator" at the next zenithal Passage.

So far so good. But as the skygazer continued his count, he
may have been surprised to note that the third time he recorded a
shadowless noon it was on a day he had labeled "1 Snake" instead of
"1 Alligator." It is more likely, however, that he was well aware
that the duration of the sun's journey to the north was considerably
shorter than it was to the south, and perhaps he had already
concluded that it was more realistic to measure time in "bundles" of
13 rather than of 20 days. The reason for thinking this is that, on
this third passage of the zenithal sun, the elapsed time could not be
evenly factored into any whole number of 20-day "bundles," but it
could be conceived as 8 "bundles" each of 13 days duration. In any
case, the cyclical regularity of such a pattern must have been
reassuring: each interval of 20 13-day "bundles" in the south being
followed by 8 13-day "bundles" in the north. Each time the zenithal
sun passed overhead on its way south, a new 260-day cycle would begin
on a day numbered "1" but with a different name. Thus, the skygazer
watched as the beginning of each successive cycle shifted from " 1
Alligator" to " 1 Snake" to "1 Water" to " 1 Reed" and then to " 1
Earthquake." Only when the sun finally came back on its sixth round
to "1 Alligator" again did he probably breathe a triumphal sigh of
relief to think that he had mastered the secrets of its movements
after all.

What the skygazer had discovered was that the cycle of the sun
could be charted as 28 "bundles" of 13 days, with its zenithal
passage alternating in groups of 20 and 8 "bundles" which repeated
themselves every fifth time around. (With his discovery of the module
of 28 "bundles," the Mesoamerican skygazer had unknowingly joined
company with a small community of wise men searching the skies of
India for similar clues to the cycles of the heavens. At about the
same point in time and half a world away in distance, Vedic priests
had also discovered the module of "28," only they used it in charting
the motions of the moon rather than the sun. To them it appeared that
the moon "rested" or "resided" for a period of 13 days in each of 28
"lunar mansions" as it moved across the sky during the course of a
year.) Surely, anyone in Soconusco seeking to grasp the celestial
rhythms could not fail to be impressed by the ingenious simplicity of
the skygazer's formula. Here was a tool for alerting the farmer to
the beginning of the rainy season that was easily understood by
everyone: The rains would start on or about the time of the sun's
northward passage (April 30), and the corn would be ready to harvest
by the time of its southward passage (August 13). In short, it seemed
that the skygazer had unlocked one of the most important secrets of
the heavens.

That such an annual cycle must have had overwhelming
significance to the early farmers of Soconusco is borne out by the
seasonal rhythms that continue to dominate the lives of the local
peasants in that region to this day. When Thomas Lee interviewed the
native farmers in the vicinity of Izapa in 1964, he learned that they
managed to obtain two corn crops a year without irrigation. The
principal crop, the temporada was planted in the last part of
April or early May, just ahead of the beginning of the rainy season
-- and concurrent with the northward passage of the zenithal sun.
Throughout the months of May, June, and July the rains would increase
in intensity, and during this period of concentrated heat and
humidity the farmer and his family were obliged to weed the corn
every 20 days to keep down the competing vegetation. At the end of
July the crop was ripe enough to break the stalk (a process called
doblada or dobla), which terminated further growth in
the plant and allowed the husk both to shed rainwater and to begin
drying. The harvest of dry corn was begun in mid-August -- at the
time of the southward passage of the zenith sun -- with the cobs
being stored in an open bin.

The second crop, or segunda was planted during the
first three weeks of September (just before the autumnal equinox),
the seeds being sown between the standing stalks of the
temporada. Twenty days later the corn patch would be weeded
and the stalks would be cut down. By December, just in time for the
winter solstice, the dobla would take place, and during
January the second crop would be harvested. On average, the yield of
the segunda was about one-third less than that of the
temporada, but field work was also less at this season. Though
religious rituals marked each of these milestones of the agricultural
year, Lee discovered that there were definitely more fiestas to be
celebrated while the segunda was growing, because it demanded
far less time and effort to produce. Thus, calendar, livelihood, and
ritual all seem to have been closely interwoven from the very
beginning (Lowe, Lee, and Martinez, 1982, 71-72).

If for no other reason than that the skygazer had (apparently)
solved one of the fundamental riddles of their universe, he was
hailed as a person of special insight, of uncommon intelligence, and
one who enjoyed the favor of the gods because he had been allowed to
share in the mysteries of the world. That he should have been exalted
by the common people is scarcely any surprise. Although they may not
have understood the significance of his discovery, they could not
fail to be awed by its results. Knowledge was indeed power, and the
skygazer would soon become an individual of respect and authority
perhaps equal to or exceeding that of the "big man" or chieftain who
exercised political control over the society -- that is, if they were
not already one and the same individual.

Whether any organized religion had existed before this time is
difficult to know for sure. Certainly the invocation of magic to
insure the success of the hunt or of the fish catch must always have
been a part of the people's ritual life. In the same way, they must
have worshiped or at least attempted to placate the forces of nature
over which they had no control: the fiery eruption of volcanoes, the
violent shaking of the earth, the cataclysmic waves which on occasion
rolled in from the sea, the tempestuous storms which periodically
lashed the coast, the frightening disappearance -- however temporary
-- of the sun or moon during an eclipse, the fearsome strength and
awesome beauty of the night-stalking jaguar, the "evil spirits" that
caused people to sicken and often to die for no apparent reason. Even
within their earthly paradise, there were numerous aspects of the
people's surroundings which challenged their understanding. It was
small wonder, then, that they so willingly entrusted the
ministrations of these forces and spirits to that special elite of
wise men in their midst who functioned as shamans or priests.

Again, ceramic evidence may shed some light on the nature of
the Soconuscans' early religious beliefs. We have already spoken
about the numerous representations of obese males, or man-animal
figures which have been interpreted as supernatural or shamanistic
symbols of authority. In contrast to these are the literally hundreds
of clay figurines of voluptuous nude women which have been found
(Clark et al., 1987, 11 ). In these, a naturalistic depiction of the
female body has been accompanied with detailed attention to
hairstyles and jewelry, giving them a vibrant, erotic quality. It is
probable, therefore, that in the initial stages of Soconusco's
cultural evolution the presence of a fertility cult may well have
constituted one of the people's principal forms of religious
expression.

What is certain is that once a method for reckoning time was
developed it allowed for more formalization of religion to take
place. Now the celebration of periodic rituals or ceremonies could be
scheduled and/or orchestrated in advance. Special days could be set
aside for religious observance, with different spirits or forces
being accorded recognition at different times of the year. The very
days themselves, with their identities distinguished by numbers and
names, acquired "personalities" -- some auspicious, some malevolent,
and some neutral. It soon came to be believed that a person had his
or her personality and fortune determined by date of birth. In short,
possibly within the span of a single generation the calendar became
an integral part of the people's spiritual and private lives, for
almost all aspects of their existence seemed to be bound up with time
and its cyclical patterns.

The ready adoption of the 260-day sacred almanac by the common
people gave the practice of religion a new currency and centrality in
their society -- and the priestly caste a new stature and prominence.
The importance of knowing how to maintain the day-count, when to
schedule the proper rituals, and how to interpret the auguries of the
different events that occurred could no longer remain the property of
a single skygazer. To allow for the continuance and transmittal of
this knowledge, it must be passed on to other and younger members of
the society in an orderly fashion. Because theirs was a preliterate
society, this was most likely done through the rote memorization of
passages pregnant with meaning -- perhaps in the form of rhyming
verses to serve as mnemonic devices
--a sort of poetry
laced with scientific knowledge. Numerical records, on the other
hand, could have been kept as tallies of ticks marked on a wooden
board with a piece of charcoal, just as shamans in the mountains of
Guatemala continue to do to this day.

But these "secrets" could not be shared with just anyone. If
the priesthood was to maintain its own privileged position of power
and authority, its fund of knowledge could only be imparted to
individuals who could be entrusted to guard it as something exclusive
and special -- individuals whose attention and dedication to this
knowledge must transcend all of their other earthly concerns. It
seems clear that the solution which the priestly caste found to
ensure such complete devotion on the part of its young novitiates was
not unlike that practiced in other societies elsewhere in the world:
remove the worldly distraction of carnal desires by insisting on
celibacy and/or sexual abstinence. However, archaeological evidence
(from the Olmecs, Zapotecs, and Maya) strongly suggests that verbal
injunctions were not insurance enough, and that the price of
admission to the priestly caste may well have come to involve
castration, if not total emasculation. (There are numerous
indications in the art of these peoples that such a practice was not
necessarily a fate reserved solely for conquered captives, but that
it was also a ritual of a religious nature. Piña Chan, for
one, makes reference to this in his final work on the Olmecs (1989,
1911.)

On the one hand, our skygazing priest must have reveled in the
power which his knowledge had given him. His "discovery" had not only
brought him heightened respect and enhanced authority personally, but
it had also laid the groundwork for the intensification of religious
activity and the emergence of an entire social class whose very
raison d'étre was the calendar itself. On the other hand, it
must have been terribly disquieting for him to realize that, after a
few rounds of the calendar, it was not really working as he had first
assumed it would. Yes, there were always 260 days between the time
that the sun passed overhead on its way south and the time it passed
overhead again on its way north. But the days on which these solar
passages occurred did not continue to take place on "1 Snake," or "1
Water," or "1 Reed," anymore. Instead they began falling on later
days, such as "2 Wind," "3 Deer," and "4 Monkey." Certainly there was
nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by admitting that the
calendar was defective. This privileged bit of information must
surely not be shared with anyone but a member of the inner sanctum.

But more than that, should the calendar continue to deviate
further and further from the observable realities of the meteor
shower or the beginning of the rainy season, even the untutored
masses would gradually become aware of its shortcomings. Where would
the priest's credibility be then? For his own reputation's sake, let
alone for reasons of intellectual honesty, he would have to pin down
the cycle of the seasons more accurately than he had on this first
attempt.

The 365-day secular calendar

Where the priest had erred, of course, was in concluding that
the cycle of the sun could be measured in 28 "bundles" of 13 days.
This meant that he had equated its annual migration through the
heavens with an interval of 364 days, when in actuality it took about
a day and a quarter longer than that. Thus, after only four years had
elapsed his count was already off by 5 days. This might go unnoticed
by the commoners at first, but certainly, as the error increased with
each passing year, it wouldn't be long before "the cat was out of the
bag."

But, if the sun couldn't be pinned down accurately enough by
its zenithal passages, how might the priest fix the length of the
year with yet greater precision? He knew, of course, that the sun
moved across the heavens between two fixed points. At its
southernmost extreme, however, the sun both rose out of and set into
the unmarked sea, so there was no means of fixing its position there;
but at its northernmost turning point, the sun both rose out of and
set into the great wall of mountains which towered above Soconusco's
inland approaches. By patient observation of the sun as it neared its
northern extreme he reasoned that he could find a place from which
its turning point could be calibrated against a permanent marker in
the landscape -- namely, a mountain.

Once this idea had occurred to our skygazing priest, he must
have quickly set about searching for the vantage point from which
this phenomenon could best be observed and against a landmark where
it could best be calibrated. The mountains to the northwest were
neither so lofty nor so sharply defined as those to the northeast, so
the latter would definitely meet his needs better. The peaks on the
northeastern horizon were, of course, the cones of a great row of
volcanoes that began with them and stretched far to the southeast
through what today are the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. One of these great volcanoes would lend
itself splendidly for his purpose; indeed, it promised to add an
element of theater to his endeavor because what the priest was
preparing to do was to demonstrate that the annual cycle of the sun
could be measured by the interval between successive risings of this
fiery orb out of the crater of one of the great mountains of fire.

We can only imagine with what anticipation he approached the
"moment of truth," knowing how awestruck his menial subjects would be
as it transpired. But, not content with the forthcoming theatrics
which would accompany his "discovery," he was also polishing up the
details of his new calendar and the means of employing it so that his
second attempt at mastering celestial mechanics would be far more
successful than his first, less sophisticated effort.

As his principal modification, he now recognized that the year
had 365 days and not 364. But, because he was hampered by a mind-set
that failed to recognize fractions (after all, you either have a
finger or a toe or you don't!), even if he had been aware that the
year was almost a quarter day longer yet, he could not have
conceptualized it. He therefore visualized the year as being composed
of 18 "bundles" of 20 days each, leaving 5 extra days left over at
the end of the year. Each of the 18 "bundles" he recognized as a unit
(which we would term a "month," although it clearly had nothing to do
with an interval defined by the moon).

Moreover, he had come up with another ingenious concept, again
apparently stimulated by his inability to recognize fractions.
Although he understood that his new time-count would begin with the
rising of the sun, he was careful to note that the day it was
initiating was not really a day until it had finished -- in the same
way that even though the zenithal sun passed overhead at noon, the
day on which it occurred was not a day by the count until the sun had
set. Thus, although there were 20 days in each of his 18 "bundles,"
he chose to number them 0 through 19. The concept of zero in itself
was ingenious, because it didn't just symbolize "nothing"; it really
meant "in progress," because until it was "completed," there was no
place for 1. And not until day 19 was completed could one speak of
the first "month" or "bundle" having been finished. The day literally
did not have a discrete identity until it was a matter of history;
or, to put it another way, it had not truly existed until it was
over!

Figure 10.

The site of Izapa lies on the right bank of the Rfo Suchiate,
which today forms part of the boundary between Mexico and Guatemala.
In addition to its key latitudinal location with respect to the
zenithal sun passages on August 13 and April 30, Izapa is also sited
in such a fashion that the position of the rising sun at the summer
solstice is marked on the northeastern horizon by the cone of
Tajumulco, the highest mountain in all of Central America.

Although it may have been the skygazing priest's intent to
replace his first attempt at a calendar with this second, more
accurate version, he probably did not long entertain such a notion.
Already accepted and "sanctified" by the use of the masses, the
260-day sacred almanac had assumed such a place in their lives that
it could not easily be rescinded. (Its continued prominence in the
agricultural and ritual cycle of Soconusco, as demonstrated earlier,
is adequate proof of that.) Even if it did not work to predict the
coming of the rains, it had already become such a central feature of
the people's ritual existence that to attempt to expunge it would
have meant demolishing the very underpinnings of their religious
beliefs.

Figure 11.

The volcano Tajumulco looms up on the northeastern horizon as seen
from Izapa. With an azimuth of 65º, its peak marks the sunrise
at the summer solstice (June 22).

As the summer solstice neared, it was clear that the priest
had yet another momentous idea in the back of his mind. Already, at
his direction, his scouts had narrowed down the ideal vantage point
from which to observe the impending sunrise. So, when his retinue of
followers trekked with him up into the foothills on the evening of
June 21, it was to a site where the forthcoming "celestial
spectacular" could not have gone unappreciated by even the most
simple of peasant farmers. The following morning, the glowing disk of
the sun rose out of the crater of the loftiest volcano in all of
Central America -- Tajumulco, in what is today southwestern
Guatemala. And it was on this site -- from where the 260-day sacred
almanac and the new 365-day secular calendar could both be calibrated
-- that the priest decreed the building of the first great ceremonial
center in all of Mesoamerica, a place whose name has come down to us
as Izapa.

Figure 12.

Around 1300 B.C. Izapa was probably the only semi-urbanized
agglomeration in all of Mesoamerica. It was the direct outgrowth of
the appearance of ranked chiefdoms in the Soconusco region, which
first emerged some two to three centuries earlier. Through most of
its early history it probably functioned more as a religious retreat
and pilgrimage site than as a center of population and trade.

Again, by using the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson
correlation value of 584,285, it is possible to fix the date of this
event according to our own calendar with perfect accuracy. As I
programmed my computer to search for the beginning of the secular
calendar, I could confidently start with the correspondence between
Maya and Julian dates which Goodman provided us. But in addition, one
further assumption was required: that the first day of the 365-day
secular calendar -- known to the Maya as 0 Pop --must have coincided
with the summer solstice. If we accept that assumption, we find that
0 Pop did in fact fall on June 22 during the years 1324 to 1321 B.C.
(i.e., the astronomical years -1323 to -1320). (Of course, were we to
employ June 21 as the date of the summer solstice, this would advance
the correlation by four years, i.e., 1328-1325 B.C. instead.) Thus,
it is entirely conceivable that, as has been sketched out in the
scenario above, both the 260-day sacred almanac and the 365-day
secular calendar were the product of the same individual -- a "New
World Hipparchus," as Sylvanus Morley has termed him -- for the
beginning dates of both counts are separated by little more than
30-35 years!